A/N: My first new fic. for the New Year. Actually, this has been stirring for a while, but I just kind of decided I'd finally put it out there, though I'm not sure how anyone will like it. –shrugs- I'll give it a try.

Warning: Slash. Language, probably. Severe age difference between couple. Nothing else that I can think of at the moment.

Pairings: HP/LM

Summary: Lucius has been living a dutiful life as the Dark Lord's servant, with a beautiful wife he was forced to marry, and a handsome son that he is more than proud of. That is, until one dark day in the middle of the final battle between the sides of Voldemort and Dumbledore, when Lucius finds his missing link. He finds what has always been missing from his life as a veela up until then. He finds The Boy Who Lived.

Of Love's Bestowing

It is a curse. He reasoned. The one I love doesn't deserve to be tortured like this. Forced into something he obviously was neither ready for nor desired in the least.

Why had this happened? He was forced into a relationship with the worst possible candidate.

His worst enemy.

His worst nightmare.

His lover and partner for life.

Third Person:

He was a veela by nature, but his precarious powers –which had come to him late in puberty- had not activated his passion at all. Oh, he had attracted plenty of people of either gender, but none had sparked anything within him. So he grew up. He decided it was pointless to try searching for a mate after nearly a decade with no luck or even the faintest of sparks. It was all well and fine, considering he was already dedicated to both the woman he was arranged to marry, and the Dark Lord. His years as a servant to the Dark Lord had lasted most of his life, and though he had not joined willingly at first, he was now more of a devoted servant. Being devoted was better than being 'Crucio'd every time you were in his presence.

First Person:

During my first year with my wife, we had had a child and named him Draco. I was uncharacteristically proud of my son, though every time I looked upon him my heart seemed to fade slightly. I couldn't understand why, exactly. Draco was everything to me. I cared for my son more than I didmy own wife, but somehow I felt incomplete. Draco tried to make me proud, even in his youngest of years, but there was always something… like a beautiful house that –when finished- was marveled upon, but the creator looked upon it and thought, 'I could have made it from ebony. It could have been stronger.' I love my son though, and I wasn't about to change him. No… only mold him into the perfect Slytherin, like I had been.

Most of my time however was more put into making the Dark Lord happy. That was what really mattered if one didn't want to find themselves disfigured.

Of course, my time of devotion had been interrupted when a one-year-old little brat had caused the demise to our Lord. Or so most had thought. I had been rather glad about the change in pace actually, but still, I knew that fiend had survived and would return eventually. Until then though, I was free.

It was another decade before he arose from the nothingness to try to reclaim his life and take revenge on the boy, Potter, who had taken everything away from him.

That was the year my own son was to be going to Hogwarts for the first time.

I, myself, hadn't even laid eyes on the brat until Potter's second year at Hogwarts, and that's when it had all began…

I had seen the boy and intercepted him and the Weasleys while they were in Flourish and Blotts. As I entered the store, the first thing I had noticed was that my heart-rate had increased in speed incredibly. I had chalked it up to anxiety at my first meeting with a boy that was supposedly more powerful than the Dark Lord. When I first gazed upon the boy, it startled me greatly. I felt a pang of hate when I noticed the boy looked remarkably like his father, James Potter, but no, after I saw those eyes and that pale skin and the way he was formed, I thought of Lily Evans as well.

This wasn't James.

No.

The hate went away within an instant and a different feeling… a tingling feeling filled its place.

I hadn't understood it, but then again I also hadn't had long to ponder it. I had dropped off the book with that blasted Weasley girl, Ginny, and I was through with my mission.

I could leave.

Yet something in me didn't want to.

It was those eyes. Those powerful verdant eyes that had caught me off guard at first sight. I didn't like being caught off guard, but somehow, I didn't seem to mind their scrutinizing stare as much… that time.

The next time I had seen the boy, I had been furious. That bloody fool Dumbledore was accusing me of things that I knew I had done, but the Headmaster's calm aloofness then the boy's impudence, had set me off.

I couldn't quite explain it, but it had gotten my blood going.

I felt alive again. The boy had outwitted me into losing one of my house elves and I had went to strike the boy and the loyal elf had defended him.

That had pissed me off. Getting thrown back by a stupid elf. The boy could defend himself; this elf –the damnable elf- had no place doing what he did.

Later that night I had pondered all these meetings, but it still hadn't helped me much.

In the years to follow I had been on missions where I was extremely close to the boy and each time I saw him, he looked remarkably different and more… grown up.

Well, that had been before when I only saw the boy perhaps once a year, maybe less. After his fifth year, things had been quiet for a short while, but then that old coot Dumbledore had taken him from his Aunt's home prematurely over the summer and began to train him –as I would later learn. Finally, Voldemort had taken it upon himself to attack the boy with renewed powers before the boy could have enough time to train properly. The battle had been in Britain, near where the whole Quidditch World Cup tournament had taken place and –unfortunately- also near a whole town of Muggles. It had taken a right many memory charms to set everything right, but the incident had just barely gone unnoticed by the Muggle papers. However, the Ministry was still collecting photographs from the fight that Muggles had taken and tried to show to others, but thankfully, everyone had thought the holders to be insane and had refused to believe them.

I dread to think what would happen if Muggles knew about us and started to look for us. It was bad enough that they are there, but to have them interfering with my life would be enough to make me want to hurl.

The battle had been both enlightening and frightening for me.

The boy, Potter, had taken up the lead in the attacks after the Order arrived. Of course, he was backed up by at least four of the Order members at all times, but after the battle had spread among all of the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord, the battle had become pretty widespread.

I had not seen the boy for most of the battle, but then I suddenly bumped into him as I was stepping backward over a dead body.

We had tumbled to the ground because of how off-balance we had been and I had found the boy, no… man… suddenly on top of my chest, his wand fallen a few feet to the side and his face contorting in pain from the landing.

The boy was wounded. I could definitely smell the blood, but I wasn't sure why and all in a rush, it suddenly came to me. This boy. This man. This sixteen-year-old man was finally of age and that's why I could smell him… Could smell his scent, his blood, his sweat, his hair, his breath, his body, his everything!

The man on top of me had gasped in shock as he realized who he was laying on and had tried to get away, but he was too late. The old fart Crabbe –who had never been too far behind me- pulled Potter up by his hair and pressed his wand to his throat with a toothy smile covered in dirt and blood.

Something inside me had snapped in that moment and I had taken up Potter's wand and used the Killing Curse on Crabbe. The fat slob died still holding onto Potter's hair, then he had fallen over on top of him.

This sight had made my stomach want to relieve me of breakfast, but I had kept it down and instead kicked the fat, dead, bastard off of Potter.

The man before me had seemed so confused as he recovered from the oaf landing on him, and he appeared somewhat fearful.

I realized that I still had his wand and I smiled at him softly, about to give it back when a cold hand came down over my shoulder with an evil cackle accompanying it.

It was the Dark Lord.

He was congratulating me on my apprehension of the 'Boy Wonder', as he had called him. He ordered me to give him the wand and I couldn't. I was staring into his eyes. Not the Dark Lord's, no, I was staring into his eyes. My mate's eyes.

My Harry's eyes.

I didn't want to call him 'Potter'. It made me think too much of his father, but when I called him Harry to myself, it made me feel a spreading warmth through my body.

He was looking resigned and desperate, and I hated that look. He suddenly looked into my eyes, though, and his eyes widened for some reason. Something he saw there seemed to give him a spark of hope.

I loved that.

I wanted that spark to grow bigger!

I turned determinedly to that bastard, that I knew wanted to kill what was mine; I wouldn't allow it! I felt my veela power surge within me. It grew within me as if it were molten fire running through my veins and it screamed at me to protect my mate!

Years of built-up power and emotions had finally broken through to the surface.

I turned to him in a flash with my wand clasped tightly in my fighting arm. I pressed the tip into that bastard's chest and spat the Killing Curse off.

A huge flash of green light and the creature that claimed to be alive, was thrown back perhaps ten yards into a pile of already long-dead bodies.

Turning back to my mate, I had to be sure that the bastard was dead, but I couldn't leave him lying there. He was looking at me with such obfuscation and relief, but then fear… and I understood his fear.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him up from the ground. He deserved to be placed on a pedestal of silk pillows, not to be shoved onto the bloody ground like trash. I pulled him close to me, my chin resting on his hair as I embraced him with one arm. He was startled and ready to fight against me, but he suddenly relaxed against me and I reveled in it. After allowing my presence to calm him for a moment, I put his wand back into his hand and pulled him along behind me as I strode –well, 'strode' as well as one could when stepping over hordes of dead bodies- over to the remains of the Dark Lord.

He tensed as he realized where I was pulling him, but when I finally stopped just before the bastard that had been the Dark Lord, I quickly explained to my mate what I wanted to do with him… just to be sure.

After my explanation, realization seemed to flood his senses and he glared menacingly at the remains of Riddle.

We both raised our wands at the same moment, but before he could speak the curse again, I took his hand in mine, entwining our fingers. This startled him a great deal, but again, my presence seemed to calm anything he had been about to say, and he ignored our connection.

Raising our wands again, we both spoke the Killing Curse and that green light came again and hit the Dark Lord with such a combined force that a large black hole darkened the bastard's chest where our curses had combined and killed off any chance that he could have been alive.

After it was through he stared at the body for a long while, then he looked up to me. He was so curious and questioning and he didn't even have to speak a word. I wanted to kiss him right then and there. He was my mate. I felt it more the longer we were connected. It all felt so right. My mate. He had been born about nineteen years after me, that's why I hadn't felt anything for anyone at all. My body had been waiting for its mate to be born –for the second half of its soul to be placed with another, then made of age. Now that he was there beside me, I was unable to guess how I had lived all of those years without him. I understood why it had hurt to look upon Draco. It was because he was not made of my mate as well as me. My son was only half complete and he didn't even know it.

"Why did you do this?" He asked me finally. "Why did you save me and suddenly switch sides?" He seemed as if he wanted to ask why I had held his hand as well, but he didn't say anything about it. "Have you been a spy for the Order all along, and I just haven't known about you?"

I had no idea how he could remain so calm with all the things that had just happened and all the things I still had yet to tell him.

"What can I ever give you to repay you for saving my life?" He asked softly, seemingly having forgiven me for all my past errs in that one instant, yet I know he had not. "Not only my life, but the lives of the other people Riddle would have killed today if it weren't for you." He seemed so young suddenly. I wanted to kiss him for all he had been through, all he had suffered through. How had he done it? So young.

"Stay with me." I begged –my voice alien to even me. "Don't leave me alone. Be my mate? My companion?" I asked, my voice as tender and loving as I could make it. I think he heard that. He heard the love in my voice and he knew it was genuine because he had not been loved much as a child –as I later learned. Perhaps his aunt had loved him, but he hadn't had parents to love him with the tenderness that I now spoke. He wanted it. I could feel it from him. Like a little puppy that craved attention and people to pet and love him for being cute. He was craving exactly what I was offering. "Let me take care of you forever. Let me love you forever." I pleaded. I knelt down in front of him, my bloodstained robes meshing with the muddy-grassy ground. "I want to show you love."